Complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI) have eased back by more than 50% from last year's record peak.

But the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) - set up to settle disputes between financial firms and consumers - said the volume it was receiving remained at a "significant level" at a time when complaints about other issues within the industry rose.

The FOS said it took on 133,819 PPI complaints in the first half of the calendar year, compared to 193,054 over the previous six months.

The body stated: "Around 5,000 people a week are currently asking the ombudsman to look into their PPI complaint.

"This is down from the highs of 2013 when we were receiving over 12,000 a week, but still significantly more than any other financial product."

The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said last week that banks and others in the financial services industry had so far paid out £16bn in just over three years to compensate customers mis-sold PPI.

PPI policies were meant to protect customers who fell ill or lost their jobs but were often sold to people who didn't need them or would have been ineligible to claim.

The FCA confirmed last Friday that lenders had been asked to look again at 2.5 million complaints they had either paid too little to or originally dismissed

It acted after noticing a significant fall in the number of cases being upheld in favour of consumers.

The FOS's chief ombudsman Caroline Wayman said: "We're seeing more and more people turn to us in frustration where they feel their bank or insurer simply doesn't understand or really care.

"And we're hearing growing dissatisfaction from people about being processed industrially as a number rather than being listened to as an individual customer."